Experience a Race Against the World’s Quickest Hellcat Challenger

We have featured all of the quickest modern Dodge Chargers and Challengers, including the world’s quickest Hellcats, with a great many Mopar monsters running in the 8-second range. In the vast majority of those videos, we watch from trackside or from inside the car as they blast down the track, but today we bring you a look from a car running against one of the world’s quickest modern Mopars, courtesy of the PaVaSteeler YouTube channel.

Scat Pack VS Hellcat

The video above shows a race between a 2015 Dodge Challenger R/T Scat Pack and a 2015 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat. The Scat Pack is driven by Clark Maier and serves as the camera car for this race while the Hellcat is the 007 Epling Garage car. If you follow the world of modern Mopar records, the Elping name should be familiar, as the father and son team of Leon and Jason Epling campaign the world’s quickest Hellcat car.

Most recently, the Epling Garage Hellcat Challenger set the new Hellcat quarter mile record with an 8.71, but prior to breaking into the 8s, the 007 car held the record with a series of runs in the low 9s. One such run came at Challengerfest 8, where the Epliing Hellcat took on Maier’s Scat Pack in a battle of manually-shifted muscle cars. Mind you, the Scat Pack is by no means a slow car, running in the mid-12s, but this video shows just how much quicker a 9-second car blasts down the track.

As the race begins, the Scat Pack (shown above doing a burnout) pulls away from the line without the Epling Hellcat anywhere in site, but within two seconds, the supercharged Challenger blasts by. The Hellcat finishes so far ahead that we can see its time as the Scat Pack nears the finish line (9.358 at 149mph) and the Scat Pack finishes almost three and a half seconds later. Really, three seconds doesn’t seem like much, but this video shows what it is like to drive a car in the mid-12s against a car in the low-9s.

The video is nearly three-minutes long, but all of the racing action takes place in the first 30 seconds, so there is no need to watch the whole video – unless you want to watch Maier cruise back to the pits.

A lifetime automotive expert, diehard Dodge fan, and respected auto journalist for over 10 years, Patrick Rall is highly experienced in the automotive world. He has clocked in time as an auto mechanic, longtime drag racer and now auto journalist who contributes to nearly a dozen popular websites dedicated to fellow enthusiasts.

“Before I was old enough to walk, my dad was taking me to various types of racing events, from local drag racing to the Daytona 500,” says Rall. “He owned a repair shop and had a variety of performance cars when I was young, but by the time I was 16, he was ready to build me my first drag car: a 1983 Dodge Mirada that ran low 12s. I spent 10 years traveling around the country, racing with my dad by my side. While we live in different areas of the country, my dad still drag races at 80 years old in the car that he built when I was 16. Meanwhile, I race other vehicles, including my 2017 Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat and my 1972 Dodge Demon 340.

“Although I went to college for accounting, my time in my dad’s shop growing up allowed me the knowledge to spend time working as a mechanic before getting my accounting degree, at which point I worked in the office of a dealership group,” adds Rall. “While I was working in the accounting world, I continued racing and taking pictures of cars at the track. Over time, I began showing off those pictures online and that led to my writing.

“Ten years ago, I left the accounting world to become a full-time automotive writer and I am living proof that if you love what you do, you will never ‘work’ a day in your life. I love covering the automotive industry and everything involved with the job. I was fortunate to turn my love of the automotive world into a hobby that led to an exciting career, with my past of working as a mechanic and as an accountant in the automotive world provides me with a unique perspective of the industry.

“My experience drag racing for more than 20 years coupled with a newfound interest in road racing over the past decade allows me to push performance cars to their limit, while my role as a horse stable manager gives me vast experience towing and hauling with all of the newest trucks on the market today.

“Being based on Detroit, I never miss the North American International Auto Show, the Woodward Dream Cruise and Roadkill Nights, along with spending plenty of time raising hell on Detroit’s Woodward Avenue with the best muscle car crowd in the world.”